“Half of 6909 languages spoken across the world are at a high risk as at least one languages falls out of use on every second week (UNESCO, 2014). When only a handful of these languages get the focus of governance, education or the web, the remaining marginalized languages (endangered/indigenous/other) need immediate intervention so that the century-old indigenous knowledges can be preserved in digital mediums. Openness is even more important here as it would be a shame to see dying knowledge to go paywalled after being documented digitally.

OpenSpeaks is dedicated to help communities learn about digital tools, especially the open source ones, provide them with Open Educational Resources (OER), and Open Data, so that they can digitize their own languages. But not just that, they can also learn how to host the content in open standards, so that we and other friends in the Openness movement can build Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing tools using their content.

OpenSpeaks is a result of several deliberations and brainstorming with many noted individuals affiliated with organizations like Global Voices, OpenWords, Living Tongues Institute of Endangered Languages, Wikitongues, Centre for Internet and Society, WhoseKnowledge?, and Digital LanguageDiversity Project (DLDP). We are learning and growing every single moment.”